Spurtle has it on good authority that councillors will not after all vote on whether to bring in a trial City Vision at today's meeting of the Transport and Environment Committee.
Councillors had been due to vote on a range of temporary measures including:
- temporary extension of the footway of George Street and Princes Street
- accommodation of a two-way cycle route on George Street
- implementation of a one-way system for general traffic and buses in an eastbound direction on George Street
- implementation of a one-way system for buses, taxis and cycles in a westbound direction on Princes Street
- minimising loss of parking spaces on George Street, in response to feedback.
However, following a last-minute rethink, a decision about the controversial move will be postponed until the Committee’s next meeting on 27 August.
The reason for the sudden change of heart is not clear, but Spurtle understands members of the SNP group were uneasy about the proposal when they met yesterday morning. Councillors in other groups are understood to have taken stock in the face of ‘stakeholder opposition’ to the City Vision (e.g. from Lothian Buses, retailers, and New Town residents groups and the Community Council), and to have taken account of widespread pleas for a period of stability in the city as the new tram system settles down (Breaking news, 14.5.13).
The trial may still go ahead, but politicians have at least bought themselves time to coordinate a justification for it.
The almost indecent haste with which officials moved to institute the trial following consultations surprised many. Transport Convener Lesley Hinds said ‘The consultation we did showed a clear desire for change but no obvious agreement about the best way forward’. But despite such lack of clarity, officials are, it seems, keen to instigate a test scheme before the tram accepts paying customers.
However, conspiracists claim there is a separate and more pressing agenda. They say the measure owes less to a desire to ’create a more accessible, welcoming and attractive City Centre area as part of wider efforts to revitalise the heart of the Capital’ than to a frantic face-saving effort to ensure that the trams will run on time from the start.
Spurtle occasionally shares some of these paranoid misgivings, but suspects that officials have also learned lessons from the congestion charging referendum of 2005: substantive changes to transport arrangements soon become irretrievably bogged down without decisive leadership.
The (at the time unpopular) trial pedestrianisation of the High Street proved the worth of pushing forward despite the doomsayers.
Perhaps creative thinking in Edinburgh requires such impetus. Perhaps an ‘enforced’ 12-month trial would be no bad thing?
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